From the Silent Cheap Seats
by Bhryn Astairre
Summary: [OneShot] Cloud missed those chances. An inner monologue of sorts, pertaining to how he felt when it all passed him by. [Part of the Oneshot 'Going' series]


**---From the Silent Cheap Seats---**

_( A/N: I don't know... gosh I'm so random it's insane... love me! LOVE YOU:D yar! )_

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_"All these thoughts locked inside  
__Now you're the first to know  
__When darkness turns to light  
__It ends tonight..."_

_-The All American Rejects-_

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_I watched them all, you know it's true._

_I'm good at observing. If I entered a talent contest, it would have been for observing other people and their reactions, because they betray themselves with even the shortest of breaths, the quickest of motions and the shyest of smiles. So it was when I kept watching them through the eyes of the past and gone, I knew._

_Isn't she a picture? Isn't she a dream?_

_Hesitant in the halo she wears like a graceful, dying hat, she is smiling faintly and trying to cheer them up, trying to make the others smile. She made me smile, just watching her. I watched her, from the distance. It was easier that way, I thought back then, because I didn't know how to get closer to even get myself so remotely burned. I was so busy with the why and the where of my own life that everything hurried past me too quickly to hold onto, to categorise and tell myself: "This is laughter, so laugh along."_

_Someone once told me: "Life is always laughing at us."_

_But it's a bad joke that nobody gets until it's too late, and by too late, I mean the punch line is no longer even remotely funny. You might smile because it's what other people expect of you, but it's by rote. It's by the old one-two steps that you memorised in those dance classes your mother forced you to take even though you know you'd look a complete moron shambling through the motions. _

_I met you by chance._

_Yes, it was by sheer chance. It's a strange thing, but I don't know why you chose me, or why fate chose me, or why any of this had to happen the way that it did, but it did. So the flower I kept from the encounter was handed away and passed along, which you would have appreciated, someone passing the kindness around to share and to love and to give. Keep giving, that's what you do, you give and you give until... until..._

_That's alright, but try to remember to save some time for you too._

_Better yet why couldn't you have saved some time for me?_

_From that moment, events spiralled out of control, I wish I wasn't such a mess and I could reach the front row and throw you roses for the performance you did so gracefully... the performance of a lifetime!_

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He didn't want to let go. His hands gripped the fabric as if his skin would rip off should it tear from his grasp. He held tighter with each insistent jolt of those around him and when his vision finally cleared, she was laid there, breathing painfully with her eye, the left one swollen shut. Her face was heavily bruised and blood dribbled from the corner of her lovely mouth. She was now a broken flower.

"Who did this to you?" He exclaimed in horror, sitting up, "Who?"

"..." She lowered her eyes.

A voice from behind him snapped with retribution in terrible volumes, Tifa's voice, dripping venom directed at him, "Cloud, how dare you?" Her tone was wholly disgusted. "How could you even ask that?"

He turned, lifting his hands in shock and then stared at the blood peppering his split gloves, the traces of skin, and wisps of golden hair that had been tugged and ripped out in his fury. Blue eyes haunted her face for the answers, desperate for the answers she could not give him. The flower, the broken and never more beautiful flower, just smiled faintly and rasped something that could have been, "Don't worry."

What was this horrible feeling? A voice that he should know said sweetly in his soul: _"This is regret. This is shame."_

But as he leaned in closer to capture those whispers of air, caressing on his cheek and conch curl of flesh, something struck him heavily on the back of his head and as he collapsed boneless he knew Tifa had lashed out with a foot in the defence of his shattered little flower...

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_But the lines you rehearsed for all of your life, they were for me alone, weren't they?_

_You know me so well in only the shortest space of time; you gave me everything in return for nothing. Why couldn't I have given you something more than my cold silence? What is wrong with me? Please tell me, how I can grow beyond what I have become stuck as, because I don't know what to do anymore. I don't know how to keep applauding at this life and this stage with players, whose faces keep changing!_

_You were... something to me._

_No, that's not exactly right, is it?_

_In your dress of pale pink and the jacket you wore because you said it would be cold. Your hairstyle you rarely changed and the quick smile and honest laughter, how you filled the spaces in my life I didn't know I had. You were like rain on a dry piece of ground, and from it sprang something I hadn't known before._

_But I can't cultivate it alone... so it stays there, unformed and without a name for now._

_Then..._

_...then came the day when..._

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His eyes were trained to the window frame and the peeling, cracking paint that was a reflection of the dire state of poverty which afflicted Gongaga in the aftermath of the failed reactor. Outside his room he knew that Tifa and Barrett argued in hushed whispers and that inside here he could stay with his thoughts and avoid the accusing stares of the rest of the party.

His hand curled and he bit the lower lip to draw blood to the surface.

With his own hands, he had beaten her. He had drawn blood and bruised her harshly, given her broken bones and taken a semblance of innocence from the very thing he idolised and had no words to express his quiet adoration of the girl with the sunshine smile from a silent distance.

_"Take care of yourself, alright? So you don't breakdown..."_

Was it a dream?

It couldn't have been.

She was Cetra, her powers transcended anything that he knew, and yet she used them so self effacingly. She had no need to mystery or magic, when she possessed both with a simple smile and a few quiet words of sympathy and compassion. But that dream was far too real for him to dismiss and what she had shown him before the intrusion of the familiar dark presence that had tainted his life since before he could recall clearly with all these strange holes in his memory where events had once been, before light had illuminated his path with the girl who smiled for him. She was the girl that he smiled for, alone.

A new feeling, how strange, what was it? The voice, answering as always, implied: _"This feeling, this is joy."_

Sephiroth.

He made his choice, it wasn't a hard choice and leaving the window, he approached the door and opened it: sure enough, both Tifa and Barrett stopped their hissed argument and looked to him. He knew his face was so cold, so lacking in emotion but he didn't know how to smile right now.

...and they followed...

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_It was a long journey, giving me time to think over my actions._

_I want to say I am sorry. Yes, I'm really sorry for being unable to prevent myself from doing things I have no control over. Can you accept them? They're honest apologies from a heart that is stained black and blue with bruises most don't see already. Please accept them, my pretty flower._

_The North is a wasteland of cold._

_However, just beyond where we headed lay the ultimate irony. You always wanted to know where your hometown was, and we found it. A small village called Icicle, most unusually, atop a slope of ice and soft snow, with trees and children wrapped to the nines in warm and comfortable clothing. It was there, in an abandoned house, that we found video tapes of a man and woman. The woman, she looked just like you, with golden brown hair and pale green eyes, even the way she spoke and gestured... her name was Ifalna. Wasn't that your mother's name?_

_Surprise, I suppose, your father is Professor Gast._

_To think that the man behind the creation in original theory of the super soldier that became Sephiroth would be your father._

_The ultimate irony._

_I think you'd laugh about it; you'd laugh because that's all you can do really. Isn't it?_

_I wish you had stayed with us, flower of the slums, stayed with us and forgotten all about the play you took the lead role in and the lines you had yet to speak, had yet to give us. I wish you hadn't gone away..._

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She looked as if she was smiling, he decided, her last smile for him alone.

Cradled on the curve of the altar balustrade, her body didn't look broken and the clever quiet bandaging of Vincent had helped to cover the worst of the wound so it seemed as thought she was sleeping. Just asleep and any moment she would wake up, she would sit up and open her eyes and start laughing, calling it an April fools joke and how hard they had fell for it.

But it wasn't.

The pool of drying blood behind him reminded them all that this was harsh reality.

His eyes burned still as with shaking hands he reached out to try and take her hand: delicate and slender, but cold, without life, without feeling now. He grasped it and rubbed gently, the transfer of his heat fooling him briefly into thinking that she'd sit up and blush, commenting with a soft; "Cloud, I didn't know you cared."

But he cared.

He simply didn't know the words to express himself.

So as Tifa and Yuffie were forced to run away sobbing and even Red seemed broken, slinking off to howl at the pregnant moon, he took the petite body in his arms. She lay limp on his chest, her head resting on the bone of his shoulder as if she had always been made to fit with him, the last piece of the puzzle he'd forgotten the box-image to a long time ago. Her eyes were closed and just a little bruised from fatigue, her hair loose and her lips curved in a secret little smile.

He longed to hear her voice, longed to hear her sing again as she had done, many nights in the past, especially when she thought no one was listening. But he'd watched her from afar, lovingly but silent, unable to find the words to rouse the feelings in her that burned in him.

A sob threatened but he covered it with a cough, looking at the faces of Barrett, Vincent and Cid. They alone had remained and each looked grim, ravaged by grief but like he, able to wear a face to cover it. The disconsolate scream of Tifa's crying suddenly cut the air and he almost stumbled, but Barrett was there, to help him stay on his feet.

"In the water," he suggested in a quiet rumble of sadness, "Let her rest here."

He didn't want to. He wanted so badly to keep her with him always that his hands tightened.

"Cloud," Vincent said calmly, "You can't take her with you. Hasn't she travelled far enough and hard enough? Let her rest. Let her sleep so we can do the rest for her."

"..."

It was the reasonable idea that he could still have revenge, he could still continue what gifts she had left behind for them that made him stumble into the lake and to the ledge of an outcrop in the water. It was faint green, on the shores by the shell house that had been home to the secret path, leading down to the temples of the Ancient colony that had been here.

With shaking hands he began to lower her, staring at her face, trying to memories every line, trying to burn it into his mind so he could never forget her. He didn't want to forget her, not ever, not ever giving up on this feeling. What was this feeling?

A voice informed him from somewhere in his mind: _"Love."_

Yes, he did.

She sank, an angel who had lost her wings returning to the water that was as soft and flowing, soothing and sweet as she was by her very nature. It pooled over the dress, the water taking little stains of red over her middle but it quickly dissipated, leaving only clear water above and around her as she went down, hair flaring out, and water closing over her delicate and calm features. Soon she was utterly submerged and falling far away.

He clasped a hand to his chest, his heart suddenly feeling empty.

What was this?

A quiet voice in his ear said: _"This is loss."_

Then he could weep. Then and only then, he could weep.

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_Roses! Lilies! The forget-me-nots and pansies, the poppies and the marigolds and flowers of every type and shape and colour ever made; to you, I throw them with a sweep of my arm that feels dead, heavy and tired. What a show! What a show!_

_But, you were gone. You were far away now, and I have to carry on, lost in the confusion that is today, the mystery that is yesterday and the bleakness that is the future, without you. My future without you… why is it always without you._

_Why, why did you go?_

_I was so close to forming the words, so close to you that I could almost tell you what I felt. But you went away._

_I suppose that is it then. Closing act for the Beautiful Princess, betrayed by her origins and forsaken by the very world she seeks to save with the power of Ages and the Ageless. My Princess, my angel, my flower... take a bow, take a bow. And you do a gesture with hands, a curtsey practised and I am weeping and clapping, applauding you so._

_I've been watching this play silently for so long from the cheap seats way in the back, that I have only one review of the play to be published in the journals read by those:_

_"Loveless: but she was loved."_

_That's right. You were loved by me._

_**Me**._

_Adieu, sweet Princess, adieu._


End file.
